If this thing's as good as you guys say, I'll be buying it. I haven't sunk into a good turn-based game since X-Com.

IMO if you like games like X-Com, you would like this, the mechanics are similar. The major difference in X-com you're only hitting one part of enemies, in battletech there are dice rolls on your attacks to determine where weapons are going to hit on the mech, but there are skills that off set this based on morale that you gain and use during missions. They are quite similar though. I hope that helps.

Ya know what? Dekker just died on me too. Rough mission, 2 demolishers, a Shrek ppc tank, a highlander, a Catapult K2 and a Quickdraw. I salvaged an entire Highlander 733 P and the last piece I needed on the K2 out of it.. but man.. losing Dekker and his rank 10 in tactics is going to be a huge blow.

I am not that far in just yet; the biggest mech I've seen so far is an Awesome. Poor Dekker died to a Death From Above though, which surprised the hell out of me! Things were desperate; the first lance had 2 trebs lobbing LRMs everywhere, a Kintaro in the shotgun config (lots of SRMs) and some damn Wolverine sensor locking Dekkar in the Centurian every single turn.

Finally, Glitch takes out the Wolverine with a purge from the Duel PPC Shadow Hawk I put together (it has zero armor to accommodate the heatsinks and I still can usually only run one on normal occasions) but it just about causes a heat shutdown to do it.

Just as we think everything is under control another lance of mechs comes into view including a Cicada which runs in like it's a damn Locust. We have to back off the Shadowhawk to cool it down but Dekker's Centurion is in bad shape. He lost the jump jets early to the Trebby's so all he's got is feets. Unfortunately cover support is either overheating or out of range. Fortunately only the Cicada is in range right now so Dekkar should be able to get out safely.

Glitch jumps the Shadowhawk out to safety figuring since an alpha from the Cicada will definitely do damage to her and there's no point to losing the SHK, a PPC, or the pilot and the Cent could probably survive. Dekker sprints as far as he can go to maximize his evasion then turns to put the strongest armor toward the Cicada... but then the damn thing JUMPS and squishes his head!

RIP!

So far that's the only death but there are a few things so far which bother the heck out of me.

1) The difficult ramps up WAY WAY higher and faster than your resources
2) I find myself always on the verge of bankruptcy
3) Travelling to find contracts or to shop is prohibitively expensive
4) Not being able to get into the "house" space areas for better gear

Earning rep is super difficult because you have to trade off salvage or money which cripples you in progression or even just being able to continue playing the game. I can field a little over 200 tons right now but I'm easily being forced against an average of 400 and sometimes 800 tons worth of equipment each contract that comes up. My last contract was a 1.5 skull that ended up with me fighting my 205 tons vs 300 tons of mechs and + 200 tons in vehicles. Those SRM carrier vehicles are a pain in the ass!

And that was the lowest contract I could pick from unless I wanted to spend hundreds of thousands of C-bills running around the systems.

Also right now I'm picking up shit gear from the stores and the battlefield salvage because 75% of the zones are blocked to me, the inner sphere is where all the good stuff is and I can't get to any of that stuff. It pisses me off!

So yeah, it's a hard game that would benefit a lot from a better difficulty meter and/or some way to progress or something... cause right now I'm going to hit a brick wall where I have to restart. Bankruptcy is inevitable.

It's still a great game that I've put a lot of hours into this weekend and will keep playing but I'm also finding the difficulty curve extremely frustrating.

I also pine for the lack of a co-op mode. This is one of those that really could take full advantage of Co-op!

It takes forever to load. Forever to save. Forever for the animations to go. Forever for the AI to move. Forever for everything to happen. I turned everything I could find to "off" and it still takes FOREVER for every damn thing to happen.

I am not that far in just yet; the biggest mech I've seen so far is an Awesome. Poor Dekker died to a Death From Above though, which surprised the hell out of me! Things were desperate; the first lance had 2 trebs lobbing LRMs everywhere, a Kintaro in the shotgun config (lots of SRMs) and some damn Wolverine sensor locking Dekkar in the Centurian every single turn.

Finally, Glitch takes out the Wolverine with a purge from the Duel PPC Shadow Hawk I put together (it has zero armor to accommodate the heatsinks and I still can usually only run one on normal occasions) but it just about causes a heat shutdown to do it.

Just as we think everything is under control another lance of mechs comes into view including a Cicada which runs in like it's a damn Locust. We have to back off the Shadowhawk to cool it down but Dekker's Centurion is in bad shape. He lost the jump jets early to the Trebby's so all he's got is feets. Unfortunately cover support is either overheating or out of range. Fortunately only the Cicada is in range right now so Dekkar should be able to get out safely.

Glitch jumps the Shadowhawk out to safety figuring since an alpha from the Cicada will definitely do damage to her and there's no point to losing the SHK, a PPC, or the pilot and the Cent could probably survive. Dekker sprints as far as he can go to maximize his evasion then turns to put the strongest armor toward the Cicada... but then the damn thing JUMPS and squishes his head!

RIP!

So far that's the only death but there are a few things so far which bother the heck out of me.

1) The difficult ramps up WAY WAY higher and faster than your resources
2) I find myself always on the verge of bankruptcy
3) Travelling to find contracts or to shop is prohibitively expensive
4) Not being able to get into the "house" space areas for better gear

Earning rep is super difficult because you have to trade off salvage or money which cripples you in progression or even just being able to continue playing the game. I can field a little over 200 tons right now but I'm easily being forced against an average of 400 and sometimes 800 tons worth of equipment each contract that comes up. My last contract was a 1.5 skull that ended up with me fighting my 205 tons vs 300 tons of mechs and + 200 tons in vehicles. Those SRM carrier vehicles are a pain in the ass!

And that was the lowest contract I could pick from unless I wanted to spend hundreds of thousands of C-bills running around the systems.

Also right now I'm picking up shit gear from the stores and the battlefield salvage because 75% of the zones are blocked to me, the inner sphere is where all the good stuff is and I can't get to any of that stuff. It pisses me off!

So yeah, it's a hard game that would benefit a lot from a better difficulty meter and/or some way to progress or something... cause right now I'm going to hit a brick wall where I have to restart. Bankruptcy is inevitable.

It's still a great game that I've put a lot of hours into this weekend and will keep playing but I'm also finding the difficulty curve extremely frustrating.

I also pine for the lack of a co-op mode. This is one of those that really could take full advantage of Co-op!

You need to do some of the story missions in between doing a few side missions, that's what got me over the hump, once you get an assault mech things start to bend in your favor. Also try and work on getting some of the ship upgrades for the mech repairs and medical improvements, I went with 2 of the mech bay upgrades fairly early on so it would take FAR FAR less time to reconfigure/repair mechs, it saves you a ton of Cbills this way and the med bay upgrades heal your pilots much quicker from injuries. The game IS difficult early on, as it should be, you're starting from scratch with limited supplies and mostly low end light and medium mechs. Get a few story missions under your belt in between doing 2-4 side missions in between and I promise you it will get easier. I don't want to give spoilers just take my word for it.

Right now my drop deck is two Highlanders, one with a PPC for it's punch with an LRM20++ to destablize enemy mechs quickly. The other Highlander is sporting a Gauss riffle and also has an LRM20++. I'm also using a Cataphract with an AC20+ (had an AC20+++ on it but it got destroyed sadly) a Grasshopper laser build, with a BlackKnight laser build as backup when needed. And kept the K2 just in case I need it at some point, I have a few other heavies in storage like a couple Jagermechs. Destablizing enemy mechs helps a shit ton, so AC's and LRM's are extremely helpful with that. As are cockpit mods that prevent injuries. The game seems to scale with what you have I'm noticing. Hell I'm more afraid of tanks now than most mechs, Shrek PPC tanks have 3 or 4 ppcs they fucking hurt, demolishers usually run AC20's on them they also fucking hurt.

The game is VERY much about positioning, getting to the rear flanks of enemies helps a shit ton as does using the terrain. You get bonuses for being on high ground. Also if you can get at least a couple pilots that can multishot, that skill is so fucking useful its not even funny. Also and this is SUPER important, evasion is likely the MOST important thing to your mechs surviving on the battle field, so move alot as far as you can and if possible end your movement with being in some sort of cover pip, that will ensure your survival chances as enemy mechs need to remove your evasion charges to really do damage more often than not. It's a little easier that I have better mechs and gear but it's still a challenge when you're facing heavy tanks, mechs, and often reinforcements. I fucking love this game so much.

Still looking for a 3rd Awesome piece to finally own one, and have 1 piece of a stalker as well. This may end up being one of my favorite games ever to be honest. But I've been a huge fan of Battletech and mechwarrior since the original tabletop game and the old Activision PC titles from way back when so there's some bias there, I love the IP, I'm just glad Microsoft is finally letting studios DO something with it after sitting on it for 14 years.

It takes forever to load. Forever to save. Forever for the animations to go. Forever for the AI to move. Forever for everything to happen. I turned everything I could find to "off" and it still takes FOREVER for every damn thing to happen.

SLOW SLOW SLOW.

It's the engine it's weak. I also am pretty sure the game has a pretty large memory leak as the longer one plays the worst it gets over time. I'm hoping they have some optimization patches in the pipe.

I was just reading this morning that clearing out old saves will improve performance. Seems the more saves you have the more the game gets bogged down, so cleanup is kind of necessary until they can resolve it.

I think some other Unity games had the same issue so I'm sure it's an engine problem.

I was just reading this morning that clearing out old saves will improve performance. Seems the more saves you have the more the game gets bogged down, so cleanup is kind of necessary until they can resolve it.

I think some other Unity games had the same issue so I'm sure it's an engine problem.

You need to do some of the story missions in between doing a few side missions, that's what got me over the hump, once you get an assault mech things start to bend in your favor.

Welp, I'm about done. Odds are ALWAYS stacked against you. Money is always tight. The story missions are a brief respite with a cash infusion for a while but the game grinds and grinds your resources and is plain and simply overly difficult. The game starts nice and slow but then it ramps the difficulty up radically high and the player has no choice in what they are offered because they are limited by their finances which are furiously governed.

I played tabletop Battletech and Mechwarrior for years and all the computer games since Crescent Hawk and Crescent Hawk's Revenge in the early 90s. I remember paying $400 phone bills for playing Battletech on Genie (pre-internet online gaming sucked)! I'm no noob to this genre much less the universe. Yet I've never had a killer GM like what we have in this BattleTech game. It is retarded how difficult this game is; I don't think I've run into anything as flat out frustrating and punishing since Dark Souls (the first one).

The only difference is the audience it's being sold to.

Smithson can just go and liberate its own goddamn self; I've wasted hours on this shit.

Welp, I'm about done. Odds are ALWAYS stacked against you. Money is always tight. The story missions are a brief respite with a cash infusion for a while but the game grinds and grinds your resources and is plain and simply overly difficult. The game starts nice and slow but then it ramps the difficulty up radically high and the player has no choice in what they are offered because they are limited by their finances which are furiously governed.

I played tabletop Battletech and Mechwarrior for years and all the computer games since Crescent Hawk and Crescent Hawk's Revenge in the early 90s. I remember paying $400 phone bills for playing Battletech on Genie (pre-internet online gaming sucked)! I'm no noob to this genre much less the universe. Yet I've never had a killer GM like what we have in this BattleTech game. It is retarded how difficult this game is; I don't think I've run into anything as flat out frustrating and punishing since Dark Souls (the first one).

The only difference is the audience it's being sold to.

Smithson can just go and liberate its own goddamn self; I've wasted hours on this shit.

It was that way for me too in the start, and then something just clicked, course the assault mech didn't hurt either. I dunno, you have to play pretty conservatively early on in your career, also carefully, and try not to make to many costly changes to refits.

Noticed this guide on steam from one of the devs, maybe some tips in there might help you enjoy it more. I knew you were a BT fan, I think we talked in a MWO thread or some mechwarrior related comment somewhere.

To me this is exactly why emergent storytelling is so much better than scripted storytelling. When Aris died in Final Fantasy 7 I was unaffected. When my random character that I grew and bonded with over many battles in Final Fantasy tactics died, it ruined my whole day. It was a much more meaningful death because I felt a true sense of loss.

To me this is exactly why emergent storytelling is so much better than scripted storytelling. When Aris died in Final Fantasy 7 I was unaffected. When my random character that I grew and bonded with over many battles in Final Fantasy tactics died, it ruined my whole day. It was a much more meaningful death because I felt a true sense of loss.

The same shit would happen to me in XCOM, too. I've restarted missions because I lost my favorite sniper.

I'm early in and I'm loving this game (though i wish it had a better engine). One of the things I've noticed is that if I'm failing a mission hard, if I re-load I may get a totally different set of (easier) enemies to fight. On my second contract I dropped against 5 Jagermech Flamers that all rushed in and wiped my team brutally. I reloaded and instead got a commando and a bunch of Cicadas and early tanks. So, your experience may vary.

Welp, I'm about done. Odds are ALWAYS stacked against you. Money is always tight. The story missions are a brief respite with a cash infusion for a while but the game grinds and grinds your resources and is plain and simply overly difficult. The game starts nice and slow but then it ramps the difficulty up radically high and the player has no choice in what they are offered because they are limited by their finances which are furiously governed.

I played tabletop Battletech and Mechwarrior for years and all the computer games since Crescent Hawk and Crescent Hawk's Revenge in the early 90s. I remember paying $400 phone bills for playing Battletech on Genie (pre-internet online gaming sucked)! I'm no noob to this genre much less the universe. Yet I've never had a killer GM like what we have in this BattleTech game. It is retarded how difficult this game is; I don't think I've run into anything as flat out frustrating and punishing since Dark Souls (the first one).

The only difference is the audience it's being sold to.

Smithson can just go and liberate its own goddamn self; I've wasted hours on this shit.

My first start of the game was going like that as well. Could barely keep afloat and constantly had my best mechs in a repair cycle. I got frustrated with see enemy mechs walk backwards to always have the best facing so i went online to see what i was missing. Never did find the answer but i did read this article https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1369436683

So I decided to restart the game. As soon as I got Medusa to Tac 5 he rarely fired a shot. I put him in a locust and all he did was move full speed to get
as many evasion stacks as possible and Sensor lock to drop 2 evasion pips from the enemy. Focus fire and save heaviest hitting mech for last and the light mechs would just fall apart. Let me get ahead of the curve really quickly by only paying for armor repairs instead of refits. By the time i attacked the prison I was at just under 4 million C-Bills. Unfortunately, I decided to put Medusa in an LRM locust. The drop in armor for LRM's got him killed. ><

My first start of the game was going like that as well. Could barely keep afloat and constantly had my best mechs in a repair cycle. I got frustrated with see enemy mechs walk backwards to always have the best facing so i went online to see what i was missing. Never did find the answer but i did read this article https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfil...?id=1369436683

So I decided to restart the game. As soon as I got Medusa to Tac 5 he rarely fired a shot. I put him in a locust and all he did was move full speed to get
as many evasion stacks as possible and Sensor lock to drop 2 evasion pips from the enemy. Focus fire and save heaviest hitting mech for last and the light mechs would just fall apart. Let me get ahead of the curve really quickly by only paying for armor repairs instead of refits. By the time i attacked the prison I was at just under 4 million C-Bills. Unfortunately, I decided to put Medusa in an LRM locust. The drop in armor for LRM's got him killed. ><

Yeah sensor lock is great for removing evasion pips. Both Dekker and Medusa died for me, Medusa actually died fairly early on, the only two remaining starting pilots I have is Glitch and Behemoth, I did find some kickstarter pilots and a unique pilot (lore wise really) that was a nice touch to see that have filled out. Again though the game is totally about positioning and using morale skills wisely, vigilance when you're unsteady, sensor lock if you're against mechs with alot of evasion going on etc. Battletech makes you play smart and really think about your moves, especially early in your career when you're only sporting light and medium mechs. It does obviously get a little easier when you start acquiring heavier chassis but I'm still getting challenged, especially on missions that toss alot of high end tanks at you. I truly do fear those tanks more than alot of mechs now.

I do have to say too as I'm progressing in the story, that it's written exactly like one of the old Battletech novels, and I absolutely love that, the missions are varied, factors change, it's interesting, you're often doing different things that are just neat, without giving spoilers. I have gladly traded sleep for so much enjoyment that this title has given so far and some frustrations too! But at the end of the day HBS did a fucking amazing job here. Battletech makes those old FASA/Microsoft Game Studios Mech Commander games look like childs play and I loved those titles too.

I always use Medusa to get rid of evasion pips; my commander sits in an LRM boat (converted Cent with two LRM 10++ and an LRM 15+++ all with +stb and crit). Medusa (or Anasia if Meddy gets hit) doesn't typically fire a shot... I have him in the Spider though rather than a locust. I have two variants, the first with the medium lasers and the second with flamer which comes in handy on some maps. Including the story mode mission which I am totally blocked on.

I simply can't beat 500+ tons of mechs, 3 turrets, AND stop the event with the 200ish tons I drop with (50t Cent, 55t Shadow Hawk, 55t Shadow Hawk, and 45t Blackjack). The last time I played it lost with the ending on was my Spider, and my Shadow Hawk (minus all its weapons and hopping on one leg) trying to melee down the final Dragon in the reinforcement lance.

After killing 7 mechs, 3 turrets, and stopping the dropship I was so drained the Dragon was still at full Armor and tore my last two mechs to pieces. I can't say any more without spoilers but it's really disgusting to go an hour long mission to lose in that fashion. And that wasn't even the 3rd or even 4th attempt.

This. Game. Is. Too. Hard. Simple as that.

They don't give you the tools (mechs) or money to keep up with what they expect of you. I haven't had a mission since early on which didn't pit me against a massively overpowered force even if on the face of it the mission should be on parity with my lance. Every available mission on my board is 2.5 skulls and my story mission is 2 skulls. If I can't beat the 2 skull story mission how am I supposed to be a 2.5 skull mission? Travelling to a new planet like Detroit where the difficulty is easier is expensive and time consuming enough I might go bankrupt before I get there AND once there you have no guarantee of having a contract available. So a month and 200,000 C-bills waste (plus upkeep).

If I still worked with Mitch Gitelman I'd send him an email asking him WTF... but I know people who can get the message to him! I hope to either understand WTF or see a patch come down sooner rather than later!

I've been playing this every night this week, and I love the MechCommander revival feel. My only gripe is the nonsense injury mechanics. I've had too damn many instances of multiple bullshit "headshot" injuries taking out pilots in basically undamaged mechs. The most egregious one was my undamaged Jagermech taking one AC10 shot to the head and losing the pilot. I definitely ragequit mid mission on that one.

I've been playing this every night this week, and I love the MechCommander revival feel. My only gripe is the nonsense injury mechanics. I've had too damn many instances of multiple bullshit "headshot" injuries taking out pilots in basically undamaged mechs. The most egregious one was my undamaged Jagermech taking one AC10 shot to the head and losing the pilot. I definitely ragequit mid mission on that one.

That happened to me last night and it killed the pilot, the mech she was in was a completely fresh Highlander, AI just got a lucky head shot, though I have to be fair, that same mission I too got a lucky head shot on just a normal attack. So it goes both ways. Just glad it wasn't Glitch or Behemoth.

I also finished the story last night, it was fantastic, some really tough missions in there too. Now I'm just doing contracts, it also opens up the map once you finish the story so that you CAN say go into Liao space or Davion space. Plan on doing that just to see if the contracts in those sectors change at all. Likely not tho.

Valllor, it sounds like you need to optimize your load outs a bit better, if you're using flamers and machine guns you're doing it wrong.

I finally beat the story mission i was stuck on and... the next contract missions were THREE skulls. I barely survived the 2 skull story mission and now they throw 3 skull missions at me.

My warriors are trashed, my mechs are trashed, at least I have a little cash but I didn't hardly got any salvage much less the catapult I would have loved to have gotten from the mission. No new mech chassis, no "recovery" missions to help level up new recruits, no break.

The game needs to be able to be tailored so I easily can grind one skull missions if I want to grind them for leveling Mechwarriors or money or whatever. There's no reason not to allow that facility except they either didn't think of it or they are being douchebags.

EDIT:

They posted an update email which includes a difficulty selector so I am not the only person who has found a lot of problems with the difficulty ramp up.

Quote:

BATTLETECH: What's Next?
Posted by Harebrained Schemes LLC (Creator)
First of all, to our Backers and new players alike - thank you for your incredible outpouring of love and support last week following the launch of BATTLETECH, and for sharing so many of your amazing game experiences with us. As a small developer, these stories mean the world to us. It's why we do this.

From the heartfelt reactions of our Backers, to the kind words from reviewers, to the epic marathons on YouTube, to the hysterical reactions on Twitch, to the goofy memes floating through social media, this week has been a whirlwind and we are thrilled to be on this ride with you.

We could easily fill this entire post and more just rounding up press and fan reactions to the game - but we'd rather talk about what's next. From the start of this project, we've viewed launch not as the end of the road, but as the birth of a living product. Over the course of development, you might recall that we often answered speculative questions about post-launch features or content with, "in success, all things are possible."

Well - thanks to you, this is the success we hoped for. And many things are now possible! We're working with Paradox on a roadmap for the next year of BATTLETECH development. This will include regular bugfixing, quality-of-life improvements, and free Updates adding new features to the game. Here's a look at the next few months of that roadmap.

BATTLETECH Post-Launch Roadmap
1. Compatibility / Performance Investigations
Our launch last week wasn't perfect. A subset of players are experiencing hardware/system compatibility and performance issues that our team is working hard to investigate. Solutions for critical issues are always our top priority, and will be released as soon as they're available and tested. Typically, we will release patches to our public_beta branch on Steam for a few days for testing before we push them to the default branch.

On that note - last Friday we released our first patch to the public_beta branch for testing. Today, that 1.0.1 Patch went live - you can read the full changelog here. We expect to release more patches to public_beta in the coming days and weeks.

2. General BugFix (Late May)
We expect to release at least one general bugfix/improvements patch later in May.

3. Localization (French, German, Russian) and Linux Support
These are both Kickstarter commitments and high priorities for our post-launch roadmap. (Along with a couple other Kickstarter commitments that didn't make it in for launch.) We don't have a more precise ETA yet for these items but will update you as soon as we do.

4. Update #1: Customization & Player Options (June/July)
We're already beginning work on our first larger free Update to BATTLETECH. This Update is all about customization and reacting to common pieces of feedback that we've received from you on the game. Here's a list of items we're currently looking at for Update 1 this summer

--Accelerated Combat Options - We're working on options for players who would like to accelerate the pace of combat missions.

--MechWarrior Customization - We know that many players would like to change the appearance, callsign, name, and voice of all their MechWarriors, not just their Commander. This didn't make it in for launch but we'll be adding it in Update 1

--Granular difficulty settings - A set of discrete options for players to customize the challenge level of the game in different areas.

It's important to note that the exact contents of Update 1 may shift during development. Please consider these general directions and priorities. We'll post a more detailed and updated list of what's in the Update closer to its release.

5. More BATTLETECH!!
The above is just the beginning! We'll be continuing with more free Updates after Update 1, and we'd also love to release a larger paid content Expansion or two - but right now we're staying focused on bugfixes and immediate reactions to launch feedback.

I found out a way to get more money is to salvage mechs and sell them. I got the 5 million credits achievement tonight.

I haven't found it to be extremely hard, maybe I have been lucky with the opponents the game gives me. My current lance is a dual ppc/lrm15 Orion, a stock Orion, one medium laser + PPC hunchback and another stock hunchback. I removed some weapons in order to make room for more armor and they are tough. If all my lance shoots at a 75 ton battlemech, it's over for him.